


The Bravery it Takes

by Anonymous



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Awkward Conversations, Awkwardness, Crush at First Sight, F/M, Lust at First Sight, Misunderstandings, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Social Anxiety
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-07
Updated: 2021-03-07
Packaged: 2021-03-14 00:28:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,581
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29909382
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Old Spice Volcano with Charcoal deodorant and antiperspirant smells like citrus, amber, and the bravery it takes to approach a mountain of lava and think “I got this.”
Relationships: Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 36
Kudos: 43
Collections: Reylo Creatives: Anniversary Exchange 2021





	The Bravery it Takes

**Author's Note:**

  * For [anopendoor](https://archiveofourown.org/users/anopendoor/gifts).



> Walgreens is one of the United States’ largest pharmacy chains. They are best known for their selection of health and beauty products, as well as having a small grocery section and large seasonal displays of cards and candy.

“Did you find everything okay?” Rey asked out of habit, as she rang up the first item—some Old Spice Volcano, on sale for $3.99—before looking up at her customer to see their response.

There was a moment of silence as Rey took in the broadest shoulders, widest chest, and thickest arms she was sure she’d ever seen in real life bursting out of a black muscle tank top. Blinking, she realized she had looked _over_ but not _up._

So she did. 

The anti-perspirant slipped from her hand, luckily landing in the bottom of the plastic grocery bag she’d already pulled out. 

_Thunk._

Oh no. He was hot. So hot. _Danger,_ Rey’s brain klaxons began blaring on repeat, her ears actually ringing with the sensation. Were her thoughts being broadcast at top volume throughout the store? It seemed so. _Danger. Big. Sexy. Danger._

His face was the oddest combination of rough and sweet. His prominent forehead and wide, straight nose demanded attention, took no prisoners, and probably would find ways to violate the Geneva Convention if they did. But his lips were full and lush. Like raspberries. Raspberries that had discovered how to combine steroids with collagen to devastating effect. His honey-brown eyes blinked at her. Once. Twice. Three times. 

“What? Oh, um, yes, thank you.” His voice was like a baby bear in that it wasn’t too high or too low, it was _just right._ He swallowed and looked down at the rest of the items on the conveyor belt, his arms swinging uncomfortably at his sides like _he_ was the one being awkward. “Yep.” He popped the ‘p’ and winced. “Yes,” he amended, voice suddenly a little rocky. “I found everything. Just fine. Thank you.”

“Oh. Good,” Rey replied robotically, forcing her hands to start moving again, into the familiar pattern of _grab-boop-bagging_ the remainder of his items—doing as best she could when her eyes kept migrating back to the acres of pale, glistening skin on display above and between the straps of his tank.

She literally licked her lips and swallowed the drool that had pooled in her mouth as she rang up an energy drink, a protein bar, some athletic tape. They all went into the bag with the Old Spice.

He moved to pull his wallet out from his pocket and his shoulder muscles bunched up, tricep twisting and traps clenching. Not the only muscles clenching in the Walgreens tonight, Rey thought as she stifled a whine and shifted her weight from one foot to the other, thighs rubbing stiffly through her jeans. She looked down into the plastic bag, filled with his purchases.

“Oh,” she felt her lips moving. “Heh,” she said. _Don’t say it don’t say it,_ her brain screeched at her. “You must work out.” she said anyway and it sounded like a question. For some reason she felt the irresistible urge to play with the loose end of her ponytail. She barely resisted, her fingers twitching at shoulder level before dropping back down to the counter. 

He flushed. The tips of his ears turned bright red. He wiped an immense hand down the front of his tank. “Oh, um, sure. A little,” he obviously lied. A vein in his bicep pulsed with the unmitigated falsehood. The seventy pounds of muscle he had on her sat solidly in judgement of that wholesale inaccuracy. Rey felt her right eyebrow—her infallible and unstoppable bullshit detector—start to rise.

Picking up on her skepticism, his eyes went a little frantic, and, at the last second, he reached for some of the holiday candy—now seventy-five percent off since it was the second week of January—and dropped it on the belt. As if buying a handful of Reese’s peanut butter Christmas trees at sixteen cents a pop meant he wasn’t that dedicated to his workouts.

Her register dinged and she blinked, tearing her gaze away from his chest. “With tax, that’ll be fifteen thirty-eight.” She looked up at his face again, because she could. 

He nodded, eyes burning with intensity, and handed her a twenty. She took it. He opened his mouth once or twice, but snapped it closed, as she made change in a daze. She could have given him four or forty dollars. Who knew? She dropped some coins into his palm and then the bills, and they looked so damn tiny, like monopoly money. Who cares if she gave him forty dollars in monopoly money?

Her cashier’s brain was still managing to control her tongue. “Receipt with you or in the bag?” 

“In the bag is fine,” he quickly replied, before wincing as if he’d answered wrong.

She tucked the receipt in the bag and held it up. “Thank you for shopping at Walgreens,” she managed, her voice deciding now would be a good time to go to low volume and drop half an octave.

He inhaled sharply. “Sure, yes, you’re welcome, thank you.” His hand never came near hers as he took the bag, and he lumbered away from the counter. His unfairly long legs, clad only in some soft-looking workout shorts, took about three steps before he stopped and turned back. 

Her heart was hammering in her chest. There wasn’t anyone else in line so Rey followed him with her eyes. She hated to see him go but had really looked forward to watching him leave, or something like that.

But he just looked at her, and didn’t say anything, just _looked,_ and bit the inside of his cheek. An increasing hopelessness rose in his eyes. 

“Have a good evening,” Rey said, wanting to cuntpunch herself when his face sort of crumpled up and he nodded, looking down at the floor. Why hadn’t she asked if there was something else she could help him with? That would have been a good opening. Or why hadn’t she ripped her clothes off and thrown herself at his feet? That would have been _brilliant._

“Yeah, you too,” he mumbled to his shoes as he turned with an excruciatingly ear-splitting squeak of his shoe on the hard floor. His shoulders were up near his ears as he marched away.

The automatic double doors slid closed with a dramatic finality Rey had never noticed before. She watched as he took a few steps into the well-lit parking lot and looked up into the sky, his head falling back, his longish black hair brushing his nape. He looked defeated, resigned, and utterly gorgeous. She held her breath as he straightened out, and for a moment she truly believed he would _turn around._ He would march right back into the Walgreens, grab her by the collar of her red polo, and do his best to figure out if she’d had her tonsils removed by examining the back of her throat with his tongue. She was sure of it.

But he must have been looking up at the stars for some actual reason, because he didn’t turn around, he only walked further into the parking lot, disappearing into the chilly January night.

* * *

Two nights later he was back, this time wearing dark jeans and a soft looking charcoal grey sweater. His hair was _very_ shiny and his lips were _very_ full and Rey was _very_ much not ready for this.

It had been a long shift and she was _tired._ She knew her hair was in three disarrayed buns and that her shirt had a suspiciously tacky stain down the front from a leaking bottle of Wet 'n Wild French White nail polish.

Meanwhile, he had the gall to walk into her Walgreens looking like an Olympic athlete who moonlighted as a poetry professor and she didn’t have the bandwidth for it. She avoided his eyes. 

“Find everything okay?” She abruptly _grab-boop-bagged_ his thirty-two ounce canister of muscle milk protein powder and set it at the end of the counter. Also on the conveyor belt was a Hallmark card that said _For my Mother on her Birthday_ in a flowing purple script across the front. She gently rang it up and tucked it into a smaller bag. 

“Yes,” he replied softly, and Rey really liked the way satisfaction sounded on his lips. She sighed, and gave in, and looked up at his face. Yep. Still the monument to perfect imperfection she recalled. 

“Thirty-six ninety-eight,” Rey grunted, ducking her head to avoid his careful gaze, his wet, pink lips, and her feelings about both those things.

He pulled out his wallet again, this time to use a debit card. When he slid it into the chip reader, his name popped up on her register display. _Benjamin Solo._ Of course. Of course his name would be sexy, just like everything else. Of course his name couldn’t have been Chet or... Shep. Nobody was inexplicably sexually attracted to Shep Solo, even if his dark, luxurious hair swooped past his temples like a raven’s wing and his deeply serious eyes pierced your soul or some shit. 

Rey pretended to poke at the buttons on her register’s touch screen until he retrieved his debit card and tucked it back in his wallet.

His throat made a funny squeak that had Rey looking up at him. “So, the other day. That was my first time shopping here,” he said, apropos of nothing. 

She blinked. “Well. Thank you for shopping at Walgreens,” she parroted her corporate programming at him, like a complete idiot. 

“Oh—” His face flushed red. “You don’t remember. Of course.” He pursed his lips, gaze down, face moving as if unsure where to look. His voice was a ragged whisper. “Sorry to bother you.”

Reaching forward, he palmed the canister of protein powder, turned, and stalked out of the store.

 _Brrr_ went the register, spitting out a foot-long receipt and _Brrr_ went Rey’s brain, seeing Ben leave with the six-inch diameter of the two-pound drum in his hand like it was nothing. He might have a baby bear voice but those were papa bear hands and it took a second for Rey to realize he’d left the birthday card behind.

“Sir!” she called after him, jogging out the door. “Sir, you forgot the card—” 

At the sound of her voice, he stopped, already in the parking lot, shoulders tense. But he turned around. She was only a couple feet away from him at this point, no counter between them and he looked at her. Really looked at her. She felt unnecessarily breathless for only having jogged about thirty feet. 

His skin glowed like starlight in the dimly lit parking lot. _That protein powder must really work,_ Rey mused as she took in the intense, helpless frustration in his light brown eyes. 

“I remember. From two days ago,” she heard herself saying. 

His eyebrows climbed to the top of that dangerous forehead. “You do?” He legitimately looked surprised and she was sure her face mirrored his in that regard. 

“Yes.” She smiled. She refrained from saying, _you lied about how much you work out,_ instead going with, “We really appreciate our loyal and returning customers.” 

He nodded, a little sheepishly. “Okay. I get it.” 

She sighed and closed her eyes, resisting the urge to just lie down on the pavement in defeat. Why was she like this? She was her own worst enemy, unable to converse normally, falling back on customer service bullshit once her heart started beating more than a hundred times a minute. 

The silence hung between them, inconvenient and embarrassing. Rey knew she needed to get back indoors and there was only one thing she could think of left to say, as horrible as it would be to have to say it. She took a deep breath, swallowing down her irritation at herself. 

“Receipt with you, or in the bag?” She did her best not to wince, but this was the kiss of death. It had to be. She’d never see _Benjamin Solo_ again. 

“With me,” he said, his voice gravely and intent in a way that was entirely too serious for the moment. He extended his hand. “Please.”

She held out the birthday card bag in one hand, the receipt in the other. “Thank you for shopping at Walgreens,” she whispered, unsteady on her feet as she got one last good look at those lush, pink lips. 

His fingertips brushed hers as he took the bag and then the receipt with his free hand, the other still holding a two-pound tub of protein powder like it was a soda can. His hand was cold and shaky, and she felt bad for keeping him out here, standing in a parking lot, at night. But still, her hand tingled where he touched it, sparks dancing on her skin, and she curled her hand into her chest, right on top of the buttons of her dirty red polo before smiling and turning, heading back into Walgreens, to get back to work.

* * *

_Benjamin Solo_ continued to come in every other evening—like clockwork—and make incredibly small purchases. He rarely bought more than one or two items and Rey was certain no one needed to shop at Walgreens for the everyday items that were so much less expensive at other stores, but maybe no one had told him that. 

And he always happened to be in the line for her register, even when the others were shorter. One time she was sure he’d let someone cut in front of him, just so he’d be at her register, but it was an old woman, so he was probably just being a gentleman. 

One night, he bought a bottle of Pureology shampoo, at nearly twenty dollars, the most expensive bottle in the entire store. Rey was certain the shine on his strands of ebony keratin didn’t come from convenience store hair products, but she wasn’t complaining. He was back in his workout clothes that night and Rey almost fumbled the large purple bottle, distracted by the way the tendons in his neck attached themselves to his shoulders and sternum. 

He didn't initiate conversation, not ever, which was a relief to Rey. _Benjamin Solo_ was for looking at, only. Their transactions were now conducted in silence with the exception of _the question._

“Receipt with you, or in the bag?” she'd always ask.

“With me, please,” he constantly replied. 

The night he came in to buy a jar of men’s multivitamins, she broke her rule about not making personal observations on customer purchases by commenting that she took the same brand. Well, she took the women’s version. When she remembered. Which wasn’t that often, but, in fairness, isn’t it the thought that counts? Anyway, she was very happy with this particular combination of vitamins and minerals, and she hoped he would be, too. At the end of her rambling endorsement, he gifted her with the biggest smile she’d ever seen from him. The sight of it—of his teeth and his dimples—gave her a bigger boost than any nutritional supplement ever could. She almost staggered backwards with the force of it.

He thanked her like she'd done him an actual favor, not just her job. It was nice and for the first time, Rey let herself imagine a world where Ben Solo liked her half as much as she liked him. 

“See you in a couple days,” she said and he blushed at her acknowledgement, stammering about the store’s convenient location, and the receipt went _with him, please_ like it did, every time.

**Author's Note:**

> Chapter 2 coming very very soon!


End file.
